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Cicatrix
CADEL
[CHAPTER 1]
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Cicatrix (ˈsɪkətrɪks)
A scar left by the formation of new connective tissue over healing cuts and wounds.
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Saturday mornings always started the same.
Lori would wake up at eight to get breakfast ready. Then she would brush her teeth, dress, and then wake up her husband who insisted on late Saturday mornings.
But that Saturday morning was different.
Lori Grimes jolted out of her sleep by a shift in the mattress. The distinct dip made by her slumbering husband was absent. Turning her head to the side, she squinted at the red digits on the bedside clock and noted it was a little past seven – still early for both of them.
She blindly reached for her husband but found his spot empty but the sheets were still warm. Lori frowned at the absence. Forcing the cottony sleep from her mind, Mrs Grimes turned around to find Rick.
Whatever she was expecting, it wasn't this.
That Saturday morning was different.
Because Lori Grimes woke up to the sight of her husband pointing a gun to her head.
II
The pink coloured curtains looked familiar.
Rick blinked away the sleep from his eyes and squinted at the morning light bleeding through the window.
Out of habit, he rubbed the sore spot above his shoulder blade, a repeated strain injury born from sleeping in cars and hard ground. But the familiar aches and pains were absent along with his chronic back pain.
However, it was all dismissible because the sudden feeling of vertigo nearly floored him.
Eventually, it wasn't the familiar ceiling, the family pictures beside his bed or even the damn pink curtains his wife insisted were 'salmon'.
It was the smell.
Honey and pinewood mixed with something floral-like.
It was a scent he was never supposed to smell again. Not after she died. But there it was, stronger than ever and Rick was suffocating in waves of nostalgia, choking him with relentless memories.
Rick Grimes shot out of bed, frazzled but silent, then backed away towards the wall by the window.
He knew this room.
The sound of moving cars jolted Rick from his disorientation, and with extreme caution, he parted the fabric and gazed out his window. Rick Grimes was motionless as he watched his neighbour across the street pick up the paper and greet Old Lady Jane by her rose bushes. People were driving, walking and the paperboy with buck-teeth threw the morning paper onto their lawn.
It was mundane and normal and so very, very wrong.
His eyes darted from object to object, picture frame to picture frame. The swelling drone in his ear increased.
Hallucinating his wife was one thing. But this?
Rick could hear his ears go fuzzy as sounds bled away, muting his world into a soundless grey. He resisted the urge to throw up after another hit of vertigo.
Whatever neural turbulence had momentarily caused Rick's brain lapse was shot back to reality with the sound of rustling bed sheets.
The sheriff's eyes darted to the body moving under the blanket. And suddenly something switched off.
Take control of the situation.
Moving on nothing but instinct, Rick Grimes grabbed the gun in his bedside drawer. His heart was a maelstrom of pandemonium but his hands were steady. This was all he knew now. This was what the world had shaped him to become.
A man with a gun.
Not understanding his own actions, but knowing the near crippling panic had to be crushed, Rick Grimes cocked the gun and aimed.
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Note: I'm always eating while watching Walking Dead and it never fails to destroy my appetite.
However, I adore the show so all I can do is soldier on with my meal.
While avoiding the beef mince in my dinner that suddenly looks uncomfortably like brain matter, I was struck with the image of our jaded, bloodied and loveably insane Rick Grimes suddenly back in suburbia. Of course he'd be accompanied by his crossbow-wielding brother, Daryl. Both unhinged and completely at lost with what to do with themselves in a world suddenly too clean.
I nearly laughed out brain matter from my nostrils.
What an idea. What a mess. What fun!
So here we are.
A character study of the Sheriff and the Redneck.
Give me reviews like you give me the flu. Always happy to get a little sick.
CADEL
